Now, you might ask why do you actually need to clean up Pinterest boards?

Over time, as you get used to being on Pinterest, and you are growing as a brand or a business on Pinterest, you might not necessarily need all of the boards that you started out with. You might have a ton of personal boards or just boards that are completely irrelevant to the strategy that you’re planning to take in the next couple of months.

In this case, it is recommended that you actually clean up all of your boards from time to time so that you can make sure that only the best people that you actually want to attract in your audience are following you and your content actually has a chance to rank when it compares to all of the other content online.

To help you with this process, I’m going to be sharing with you all of the hacks on how to actually clean up your Pinterest boards.

Step 1: Categorising your existing boards

Step one is actually pretty simple. We’re going to segregate your boards into four different categories that I will talk more shortly about.

Step 2: Updating your boards

Once we categorize your boards and we know which boards we are going to keep, which ones you’re going to delete, the next step is a pretty logical one and that is to update your boards. Now, you will obviously update the boards that you want to keep, right? If you want to delete some boards, then it doesn’t make any sense to be updating them.

Follow this step-by-step action plan because ideally you should do it one after the other. Don’t start with step three and then go back to step one because that wouldn’t make much sense when it comes to actually creating a neat uniform account.

Step 3: Create new boards

One of the things that is very central in Pinterest is to continuously create new boards. Not every month, not every few months, but every time that you go through this exercise because it is so important for Pinterest to understand what your existing content is, what your existing pins are all about.

And one way for Pinterest to understand that is through the new boards that you create. So, let’s say that you’ve recently ventured into a different vertical or into a different category or to a different product and you have no boards at all on Pinterest that represent it.

How will Pinterest ever know that you are also interested in promoting or selling this product or this service? Hence, it’s super important, not just to categorize, move, delete and all of that and update your boards, but also to actually create new boards from time to time.

Now that I’ve listed the 3-step plan let’s talk a little bit about step one, which is categorizing your boards.

So, there are four things that you can do when it comes to categorizing your boards. Now, in the workbook, I’ve given you space, where you can list down all of the boards in each of these four categories. Make sure to actually do that especially if you have a lot of boards like I do, for example, I think I have over 150 boards.

Category #1 Keep (boards that perform well)

The first category that you need to figure out about your boards or that you need to identify is which category of boards to keep. Now these are the boards that have been performing well.

Pinterest analytics recently started to show their top boards as well. So that’s amazing. You can start with that. You can also check into your board insights on Tailwind and see which are your top performing boards.

Make sure to filter out the group boards because the performance of those depends on a collective of people. So at this stage make sure that the boards that you actually decide to keep are your personal boards to figure out exactly how well they are performing.

Then you can always redo this exercise for your group boards as well. But start with your personal boards first because that’s probably where you’ll find the most clutter and the most need for an update, right?

So, keep the boards that actually are performing well, that fit really well with your existing brand or your business that you have currently shared posts in. Or even if you had shared posts, let’s say one or two years back, but they’re still existing somewhere on the internet, you want to keep those boards.

Do not delete those boards as long as they link to something relevant on your website right now or on your platform or on your business website right now, you want to make sure that you’re keeping those boards.

Category #2 Move (boards that need a change of place or order)

There might be some boards that you’re unsure of or that you are not really sure exactly what direction it would take, right? So, what I would do is that I would use the drag and drop feature of Pinterest, which you can do when you go to boards and select the filter. Normally I think they categorize A to Z or last saved too, but you can categorize them and move them around to see if your boards make a more logical order.

For example, let’s say that you have two different categories that you have boards in. You have a category of personal development and another of let’s say finance. Now these can be quite different categories and if you’re an OCD freak like I am, it might make a little bit of sense for you to actually move these boards in a way that is more logical for a user.

So you might choose to put all of your personal development boards on the top and you might choose to put all of your finance boards at the bottom. Totally depends on you.

You can also put boards in this category that you’re not really sure where they belong, like you’re not ready to keep them, but you’re also not ready to delete them. So just put them in this category and then we’ll go to step two and figure out what to do next.

Category #3 Merge (boards that are too overlapping)

There might be boards that are too overlapping which means the audiences are too similar. An example of this is if you have a board called travel hacks and you also have a board called travel tips.

Chances are most of the pins in these boards are pretty similar and this confuses you as well because each time you save a pin, you not only have to save this pin both the times, but also the users are kind of duplicate users.

The trick to doing boards well is to have boards that are similar but not so similar that they’re completely overlapping each other and actually basically eating the other board up. So you want to make sure that you merge those boards that are too overlapping, too similar.

But be careful not to merge boards that are a sister category of a board. For example, travel guide and travel tips would still be two different types of boards. But travel tips and travel hacks are pretty similar.

You can still choose to keep them separate if that’s something that you want. But this would be a good way for you to identify which boards actually need to be merged because they’re just too overlapping and one is getting ignored because of the other. Or you’re just getting confused each time you save pins to that board.

So, make sure to list out all the boards that are in the merge category.

Category #4 Delete (boards that no longer fit your categories)

Delete boards that absolutely do not fit your goal with Pinterest. They do not fit your business or your brand.

These could also be categories that you started out and thought that you might save pins to or that you were interested in or even personal categories that you no longer pin to, make sure you delete all of those boards that are completely irrelevant.

Now, one thing to be careful here is to not delete pins that are still linked to your account because if you do then they’re going to lead to a defected URL or a 404 or something. So make sure to move those pins first into a more standard board.

If you have a “best of” business or “best of” blog board, make sure that all of your top pins in these delete category boards are first moved into a safe board where they belong. And then delete the remaining pins.

If there are boards where you have no pins of yours at all, then it doesn’t matter, you can go ahead and hit delete. But if these boards actually have your pins, you don’t want to accidentally end up deleting those pins because that might still be somewhere active on the Pinterest hemisphere. And once a user clicks, they might not be able to find exactly where that pin went. So just to improve the user experience, you don’t want to do that because it would hamper the user experience.

So, these are the four categories that you need to categorize your boards into and take a couple of minutes, sit down and write down each of these categories that you know exactly what to do with each of these categories in the next step.

Now coming to the next step of updating boards. This is where it gets much more interesting and much more tiring because you’ll have to put in a little bit more work here. But this is the core of this activity, right? We are trying to update and clean up your boards to directly fit your current brand and business on Pinterest.

There are five steps that you need to check here and in the checklist you will also see these five steps. So make sure to print it out or see it side by side when you’re going through this masterclass.

Step 2.1 Have a clear keyword in the title

The first step that you need to take into consideration is that there is a clear keyword in the title.

I know that people often love naming boards such as cute hairstyles or yummy treats, etc. But I would request you highly not to do that because not only is this board title not visible in search, it’s something that nobody would ever really find on search.

The whole point of having a board is to make your profile, your domain, your account more visible on Pinterest search. And that just does not happen when you don’t have a keyword in the title.

When you make a random keyword or a random title which doesn’t really align with the keyword, then people are not able to find your boards, follow you, save your content, repin, share, go to your website or buy from you.

So please do rename your boards, if there is no clear keyword in the title. You might also want to just add a few things in the beginning or in the back. For example, if your board is named personal development, maybe you could change it to personal development tips or how to achieve personal growth or something like these.

One of the ways in which you can find all these keywords is by going in the search bar of Pinterest and figuring out different long tail keyword combinations. Keep playing with it until you find one that accurately fits your board.

Step 2.2 Pick a category for your board

To do this you want to go on the edit button and see if a category is picked for your board or not. This is so important because not only does it help Pinterest rank your content, but it also helps people to find a similar content to your board.

For example, if I’m a person who is hugely into motivational quotes and into fitness and into health, then automatically my feed is going to have more boards that fall into this category. But if you never categorize your board accurately into health and fitness or into quotes, then how are people supposed to find your board, right? So make sure you pick the right category for your board before you move forward.

Step 2.3 Make Board description keyword rich

The third thing you need to do is to see if the board description is keyword rich or not.

I want you to find out what are the top keywords that anyone would be searching for when it comes to searching for the content on this board. Go back, write it down, save it in your notes, write it in your notepad, whatever feels right for you or whatever you feel is easy for you.

But make sure that your board description is keyword rich and actually reflects properly what a person should expect to see in this board.

Step 2.4 Have at least 100 pins in our board

The next thing that you want to do is to see if your board actually has at least 100 pins. So it could be that you just got into a board creation spree, like I do sometimes, and then totally forgot about this board’s existence.

And now, you’re doing this exercise and you realize, woah, I only have 10 pins in 10 of my boards that not only is super thin and fluffy content, which really doesn’t attract a lot of users, but it also is not good for your brand overall.

So make sure to add at least 100 pins and your board, especially for new boards.

Lastly, before you bounce along to the next board, to update it, make sure to actually save some recent pins to give it a little bit of extra boost and love to your board so that Pinterest knows that this is a topic that is relevant to you, this is a topic which is relevant to your users and this is a topic that is something that will take your domain forward.

Now this step, step two, is a step which you have to do individually with all of your boards. Especially with all of your boards that you’ve decided to keep, move and merge, do all of these activities.

Obviously, you don’t want to do this step for the boards that don’t exist anymore at this point, but for all the other three categories, go one by one and update all your boards.

Step 2.5 Create new boards

The last thing that you have to do is to actually create new boards. Now, again, this is one of those activities that you have to do, especially if you have a constantly moving brand or business where you continue to share different content ideas and also something that you can do, attract new audiences.

For example, if I am a blogger, let’s say, a travel blogger but I think that my audience is also interested in finance or in home decor, then it might make sense for me to actually add those topics even if I don’t actively pin on these topics or even if I’m not creating content on these topics because I can choose to curate these topics and show it to my audience so that they can have a better experience each time they land on my profile or each time they interact with any pin from my domain.

And this is the aim that you should have when it comes to creating new boards as well. So you can think along these lines of “what are some new content topics you plan to share soon” or “are there any ideas that you want to extend” or “are there any new products that you want to share”?

2.5.1 Create boards specific to your product

For example, you can create a board which has trending products from your website or the top best-selling products, or your favourite editor’s reviews.

Or if you’re into fashion or beauty, you can actually create boards which are specific to you or which tell the audience what are your favourite products at the moment in a particular category, like an editor’s pick.

2.5.2 Create boards in extended categories

Next, you can also think about what are some of the extended categories that your current content falls in. But remember, do not confuse extended categories with overlapping boards.

So for example, if I am, let’s say a travel blogger who is focused on Europe, it doesn’t mean that my audience is only looking to travel to Europe. They’re also looking to travel to the US or to the UK, to Asia, to Australia, or to Antarctica.

As long as my audience has these interests and I’m aware of those interests, I can actually benefit from having boards in these extended categories because these are categories which are in the neighbourhood of the region or the niche that I’m in or the industry that I’m in. They’re not exactly what I post content on, but I can obviously create a better profile by having these boards with me.

2.5.3 Create boards to attract your dream audience

Lastly, you can also think of what new boards will attract your dream audience. To do this, I would actually recommend you to use the prototype, which is to use audience insights to look for top categories that your audience is interested in.

Pinterest analytics is awesome. There is so much information you can find there and one of the key things that you can do is to actually click on audience insights, scroll down a little bit and see what are the top categories that your audience is interested in.

So it might be finance, it might be home decor, it might be Asia travel, it might be quotes, it might be self-growth. Take note of all of these categories and then create smart boards that attract the same users that actually have an interest in this. This is basically like giving people what they want.

Let’s say you love one ice cream flavour and that’s what you think your audience loves too. But maybe they also love four other ice cream flavours. So when you don’t stock those ice cream flavours at your shop, you’ll lose out on customers. You can’t just stock only one ice cream flavour that you think you and your audience will both love. You have to expand a little bit to actually attract your dream audience and a bigger audience, more importantly.

These were the three steps that you need to follow in order to have a clean, neat layout when it comes to your boards.

This comes to the end of this post. I hope you found the steps and the information useful.

If you’e like to take your brand and business to the next level on Pinterest, without waiting for years or spending money on ads, then we’d love to see you inside Pinfluencer Colletive!

About Shruti Pangtey

Shruti is a travel blogger turned entrepreneur. Before she became an entrepreneur, she lived in three different countries, finished two master's degrees and helped scale multi-million dollar startups. Her advice has been featured in the Thrive Global, Matador Network, Her Campus, Medium and is an Amazon bestseller. Her mission is to help women creators become badass CEO's. When she isn't on her laptop, she's traveling the world, attempting a new yoga pose or learning a new language.